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That may be your opinion, but it's obviously not what Sun was concerned with. They could easily have written out a guarantee of free IP licensing for anyone using their FS. That's done all the time with other licenses - for example, like how Google treated VP8. Instead, Sun told people that they could only be safe from patent attacks if they used the GPL-incompatible license and that if someone reimplemented their FS in GPL for Linux they'd be free to assert those patents. In other words, they very clearly wanted to use their patents to make sure Linux didn't get ZFS, so removing patents wasn't their main concern. Keeping them was.

I don't blame Sun for this at all - it makes perfect business sense. I'd probably do the same thing if i was in their shoes. But trying to read your own motives into their actions is a losing proposition.

What Does Oracle Gain From Both ZFS And Btrfs
I have no fucking clue. I do not know why they are investing in two advanced filesystems that have so much feature overlap and are positioned as direct competitors to each other.

Well they started BTRFS _before_ they bought Sun (which got them ZFS), and the reason they started it is likely because they needed a stronger enterprise scale file system for their Linux offerings where they want to sell Oracle database solutions.

Given that I'm hardly the only one with a deep distrust as to Oracle's open source commitments (just take this recent gem: http://www.dcdata.co.za/public/oracl...s-open-source/) it's a very important thing that BTRFS is currently being co-developed by a strong line of Linux focused/based companies outside of Oracle.

Originally Posted by Serge

But yes, I have read that a weaker copyleft than what was in GPL was one of the fundamental goals of the CDDL.

Sounds a bit weird as they were first pinning their hopes on GPLv3 which certainly isn't 'weaker' copyleft, but of course is also incompatible with GPLv2 and as such Linux (as it is licenced as GPLv2 ONLY), which was the most important point.

However as GPLv3 was not finalized in time, the current weaker copyleft seems to me more a result of them finally basing the CDDL licence on the Mozilla Public Licence (which was GPLv2 incompatible), but that's just me speculating.

Originally Posted by Serge

The CDDL was written as a deliberate act of hostility against the GPL.

GPLv2 to be exact, as the whole point was to make sure that Linux which was eating them alive, couldn't use their coveted tech.

Let's not forget that during this time, Jonathan Schwartz as CEO of Sun was also running around verbally attacking GPL (with beauties like: 'You can't make it proprietary once you have licenced it under GPL!', well no shit Sherlock) as a result of them being killed in the market place by Linux.

Ironically they later started licencing key technology like Java under GPL themselves, again showing that the anti-GPL thing was nothing but a business decision directed at Linux.

Well they started BTRFS _before_ they bought Sun (which got them ZFS), and the reason they started it is likely because they needed a stronger enterprise scale file system for their Linux offerings where they want to sell Oracle database solutions.

Given that I'm hardly the only one with a deep distrust as to Oracle's open source commitments (just take this recent gem: http://www.dcdata.co.za/public/oracl...s-open-source/) it's a very important thing that BTRFS is currently being co-developed by a strong line of Linux focused/based companies outside of Oracle.

Sounds a bit weird as they were first pinning their hopes on GPLv3 which certainly isn't 'weaker' copyleft, but of course is also incompatible with GPLv2 and as such Linux (as it is licenced as GPLv2 ONLY), which was the most important point.

However as GPLv3 was not finalized in time, the current weaker copyleft seems to me more a result of them finally basing the CDDL licence on the Mozilla Public Licence (which was GPLv2 incompatible), but that's just me speculating.

GPLv2 to be exact, as the whole point was to make sure that Linux which was eating them alive, couldn't use their coveted tech.

Let's not forget that during this time, Jonathan Schwartz as CEO of Sun was also running around verbally attacking GPL (with beauties like: 'You can't make it proprietary once you have licenced it under GPL!', well no shit Sherlock) as a result of them being killed in the market place by Linux.

Ironically they later started licencing key technology like Java under GPL themselves, again showing that the anti-GPL thing was nothing but a business decision directed at Linux.

Good counter-points, all of those. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever get honest answers to some of these questions. There have been a number of directly contradictory statements made by Sun execs and engineers over the years. Many of these people are spin-doctors. Even some that didn't start out as professional spin-doctors ended up going that way. And the job of a spin-doctor is to sell lies without actually lying.

Thanks for pointing out that Sun licensed Java GPL. It appears that Sun was much more friendly to the GPL when the code in question had appeal outside of Unix-like systems. Based on that, the idea that Sun was using the CDDL as a way of trying to get the best of both open source and proprietary licensing does seem to have some weight. On the other hand, the process of open-sourcing Java had begun many years before the open-sourcing of DTrace, ZFS, and the rest of that Unix tech. It's highly possible that the decision to license Java GPL predates the creation of the CDDL.

That may be your opinion, but it's obviously not what Sun was concerned with. They could easily have written out a guarantee of free IP licensing for anyone using their FS. That's done all the time with other licenses - for example, like how Google treated VP8. Instead, Sun told people that they could only be safe from patent attacks if they used the GPL-incompatible license and that if someone reimplemented their FS in GPL for Linux they'd be free to assert those patents. In other words, they very clearly wanted to use their patents to make sure Linux didn't get ZFS, so removing patents wasn't their main concern. Keeping them was.

Sun did not just open source ZFS. Sun open sourced their System V Release 4 UNIX derivative, which included ZFS.

Originally Posted by smitty3268

trying to read your own motives into their actions is a losing proposition.